Do something, anything, but don't remain silent. Not now. This is the moment. It won't come again.

75 years ago today, in Flint, Michigan, the people said they'd had enough and occupied the factories until they won. What is stopping us now? The rich have one plan: bleed everyone dry. Can anyone, in good conscience, be a bystander to this?

My uncle wasn't, and because of what he and others did, I got to grow up without having to worry about a roof over my head or medical bills or a decent life. And all that was provided by my dad who built spark plugs on a GM assembly line.

Let's each of us double our efforts to raise a ruckus, Occupy Everywhere, and get creative as we throw a major nonviolent wrench into this system of Greed. Let's make the politicians running for office in 2012 quake in their boots if they refuse to tax the rich, regulate Wall Street and do whatever we the people tell them to do.

The use of Twitter information in investigations is a rare, but not unheard-of tool for law enforcement. Last year, federal authorities sought information on Twitter related to the WikiLeaks organization, and a federal judge upheld the request.

But Twitter has become known for opposing such requests and even alerting users of law-enforcement subpoenas.

A week ago, Fawkes tweeted a link to the subpoena that Boston police and the Suffolk district attorney’s office had sent to Twitter in California requesting Internet protocol addresses on his Twitter account, as well as details on the @OccupyBoston Twitter account and for Twitter users who used the hashtags #BostonPD and #d0xcak3.

REPORT: ROMNEY RAN AS PRO-CHOICE IN 1994 BECAUSE POLL SHOWED ‘IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR A PRO-LIFE CANDIDATE TO WIN’ | In a new book, Boston journalist Roland Scott reports that Mitt Romney ran on a pro-choice platform in 1994 after “polling from Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan’s former pollster whom Romney had hired for the ’94 campaign, showed it would be impossible for a pro-life candidate to win statewide office in Massachusetts.” Romney is now trying to assure conservative voters he is pro-life, and has previously said his switch before running for the presidency was a moral revelation.

Telecom customers may sue government over wiretapping, court says
An appellate panel reinstates a lawsuit against the federal government over post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping and sends the case back to U.S. district court for trial.

Residential telephone customers can sue the government for allegedly eavesdropping on their private communications in a warrantless "dragnet of ordinary Americans," a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

Lawyers for customers of AT&T and other telecommunications providers hailed the ruling for allowing the courts to decide whether widespread warrantless wiretapping violated their constitutional rights.

"It's huge. It means six years after we started trying, the American people may get a judicial ruling on whether the massive spying done on them since 9/11 is legal or not," said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was among those fighting for a day in court.

On more than one occasion my father, a janitor, had to take up a collection for a student to send home to their family, to help them buy a ticket if there was an emergency, or to subsidize the funeral expenses for one of his crew, or the part-timers, who didn’t have his years of seniority, and pay.

No child could do that job.

My father only wanted me to get a job where my hands would be clean, and I would not have to pick up other people’s messes. I have, fingers crossed, more or less gotten that far. It has taken some years, and a bit of growth. But now, I am finally proud to be the child of a janitor. Those millions of us who were taken care of, provided for, and raised by working class folks such as maids, home health care workers, and janitors, have much to hold our heads high about.

These people are the real “job creators” in this country: they pay bills, provide for their families, and donate to churches, mosques, synagogues, and charitable organizations.

Working class people like my father help to sustain communities and neighborhoods.

Whenever Newt Gingrich and his brand of 1% percent plutocrat conservatives besmirch the working people of this country, people like us and our kin, we need to speak up. There is no shame in our lineage. And all of us need to say thanks, to acknowledge those janitors, maintenance people, and the like who work in our schools, office buildings, apartment complexes, and take care of our aged and sick parents and relatives. They deserve our respect; unfortunately, they rarely receive it from the American people.

In another example of the declining fortunes of the right-wing extremism propagated by conservative media and displayed so prominently by the GOP family of clowns competing for the Republican nomination for president, Nielsen has reported that the ratings for Fox News have taken a steep dive in 2011.
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/cnn-2011-a-year-of-big-news-events-drives-rebound_b104218Of the three main cable news networks, Fox News is the only one that went down compared to their ratings in 2010. And a double-digit decline at that. FoxPods will, as usual, point out that Fox is still the top cable news network, but that is beside the point. Its audience is peeling away at a rapid rate and over time they will be unable to sustain their leading position. It is also important to put those numbers in context. While Fox is the #1 cable news network, they lag far behind the broadcast nets. In fact, the highest rated program on Fox (O'Reilly Factor) has about half the viewers of the lowest rated broadcast news program (CBS Evening news).

All three cable networks were impacted by extraordinary events that affected their ratings performance. CNN was helped by breaking news stories like the death of Osama Bin Laden and the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis. Because CNN has the best developed network of international bureaus, viewers frequently turn to CNN for major breaking news events.

MSNBC was hurt by the loss of Keith Olbermann and numerous schedule shakeups, but still managed to land in positive territory. Fox, of course, lost a notorious personality in Glenn Beck, but that likely kept Fox from declining even more than they did. Beck's ratings were in free fall and dropped 37% between January and his sign-off in June. His replacement, "The Five," has held pretty steady since its debut.

Comments (100) By JONATHAN MARTIN | 12/27/11 7:15 PM EST
Threats to disrupt the Iowa Republican caucuses next week have prompted state GOP officials to move the vote tabulation to an "undisclosed location," POLITICO has learned.

The state party has not yet told the campaigns exactly where the returns will be added up, only that it will be off-site from the Iowa GOP's Des Moines headquarters. The 2008 caucus results were tabulated at the state party offices, which sit just a few blocks from the state capitol.

Activist groups including the Occupy movement have indicated that they'll attempt to interrupt rallies in the closing days before next Tuesday's caucuses.

The AP reported today that Occupy is making plans to even attend some caucuses and vote "no preference," but not disturb the voting process.